Fibromyalgia and Chronic Lyme Disease Linked to Accelerated Aging in Patients

Suffering from diseases like fibromyalgia, chronic Lyme disease complex or autoimmune diseases is bad enough, not to mention finding a medical center that can diagnosis and treat the problem correctly, but one of the lesser-known side-effects of chronic disease is accelerated aging throughout the body. These diseases are degenerative, meaning they speed up the aging process in patients. Thankfully, science, coupled with integrative medicine is catching up and anti-aging medicine continues to make progress in bringing optimal health to patients once all proper treatment and detoxification is completed.

What is Lyme Disease?

What do we mean by proper treatment and detoxification? First, it is the removal of all infectious agents, chemical and heavy metal toxins and neurotoxins.. After treatment, anti-aging medicine is used to bring the patient to optimal health.

At our medical center, we provide an overview of anti-aging medicine to help chronic disease patients once and only once all infections, toxins and neurotoxins have been stabilized in the patient. Otherwise, we would simply be using anti-aging medicine as a symptomatic band-aid therapy rather than addressing the causes of illness.

• What Is Aging and What Causes It?
• Policing Cell Division and Energy with Mitochondrial Health
• Bio-Identical Hormones: Biological Age Verse Chronological Age
• Antioxidants and Oxidative Medicine: Free Radical Stress
• Nutritional Profiles
• Nerve and Brain Nutrients

What is aging and what causes it?

Everyone grows older – it's a part of life. But why do some people seem to lose their memory or motor skills faster than some, while others don't seem effected at all. Yet, research shows that even late in life, there is room for physical, mental and social development and growth. That means, even folks one step away from the nursing home have the potential to reverse those processes. The only question is, how? The answer is, it ends the same way it starts – with health.

Chronic disease patients have even greater propensity to experience age-related decline throughout their mind and body. In fact, long-term use of many conventional medications also accelerates the aging process, leading to inflammation and worsening of symptoms.

Policing Cell Division and Energy with Mitochondrial Health

You may remember from biology class that the mitochondria are a portion of the cell that produces chemical energy, earning the nickname "cellular power plants." Mitochondria are also responsible for cell respiration, cell signaling, cell death and controlling the cell cycle and its growth. Naturally, numerous published articles suggest a link to aging.

When your body fights off an infection, neurotoxins will damage the mitochondria. As mitochondria become weaker and experience various forms of dysfunction, the cellular processes they control also become weaker and this will accelerate disease and in some cases, even causing various cancers. This is also linked to the ageing process, such as loss of skin elasticity, frailty, energy and other markers for old age.

As part of any good anti-aging treatment program, integrative doctors have many tools on hand, including various nutritional changes, oxidative treatment, antioxidants and proper physiological exercise. The final outcome is greater prevention and increased energy.

Bio-Identical Hormones - Biological Age Verse Chronological Age

When cleaning out the gunk from your system and detoxing, it's important to balance your hormones, especially the thyroid gland. The thyroid is a large ductless gland in the neck that regulates growth and metabolism. Hyperthyroidism, is overactivity of the thyroid results in rapid heartbeat and increased metabolism. On the reverse side is hypothyroidism, which is abnormally low activity in the thyroid, resulting in stunted growth and mental development in children and adults.

According to Dr. Mark Starr, M.D., Hypothyroidism Type II is caused by a combination of environmental and genetic factors. Unfortunately, most lab testing for hypothyroidism is inadequate and most current treatments are ineffective.

Thyroid hormones are some of the most important in the body, but you can't just pump synthetic hormones into the bloodstream to fix the problem. For example, in 2002, the Women's Health Initiative was halted prematurely after it was discovered synthetic estrogen (Prempro) was linked to increases in breast cancer, heart attack and stroke. There have been no clinical trials directly comparing the effectiveness or efficacy of bioidentical versus nonbioidentical compounds, which makes you wonder why. However, when given the option, the nationwide trend is to choose the bio-identical hormone.

A patient can be 70 and have the hormonal function of a 40-year-old or 35 and have the hormones of 60-year-old. It's easy to see this with proper and simple testing. When dealing with chronic disease, it's most likely the latter situation and should be corrected as a matter of proper follow-up treatment and returning a patient to optimal health.

Antioxidants and Oxidative Medicine - Free Radical Stress

Balancing nutrition is difficult, especially when we live in a world surrounded with food that is essentially garbage. But healthy eating is more complex than just having a salad once a week. It has a lot more to do with your personal nutritional profile, which is modeled on your genetics, medical history, metabolism and current diet. Taking a multi-vitamin each day is good, but hardly enough.

Using in-house profiles and state of the art testing techniques, we can find the best way to balance your nutrition. When you're sick or recovering, your needs go up and so does your metabolic needs. Chronic disease and medications create numerous vitamin, mineral and amino acid deficiencies in patients.

Assisting nutrition using supplements is essential to recovery, but finding the right supplements isn't easy. Nutrients need to be given in therapeutic doses, preferably through an IV, the most bioavailable form, as oral supplements aren't able to reestablish the body's demand fast enough to catch up. An IV also helps replenish deficiencies quickly while hydrating the patient.

Nerve and Brain Nutrients

Your body needs nutrients and your brain needs nutrients as well. Healthy serotonin regulation is the primary focus, however, just like you can supplement nutrients for the body, you can do the same for the brain.

Doctors can help you test neurotransmitters and rebalance nutrients that help protect brain cells, enhance circulation to the brain and bring about health and equilibrium. Even hormones impact memory and brain function, as do amino acids and various phytonutrients.

Another important factor in anti-aging is healthy myelin, a protective sheath that forms over the axon of the neuron, defending it and ensuring neural signal transmission. When damaged or old, the myelin sheath is thought to contribute to degenerative conditions, such as multiple sclerosis. Because myelin is made of fat tissues, a diet of healthy fat (such as omega-3 or omega-6 fatty acids) will help you have healthy nerves. Also, phosphatidylcholine (PCs, also known as lecithin, are substances widely distributed in human tissues, egg yolks and some plants, consisting of phospholipids [fatty acids] and choline [a basic compound important in the synthesis and transport of lipids]) and serine (an amino acid that makes up most proteins) can impact and help memory as well. The take-home message is that if your doctor is properly trained, he or she can help you balance these factors to bring you to a better level of health and mental energy.

Obviously, if disastrous invaders in the body are allowed to make house, they are going to damage cells and lead to increased aging. The best way to handle this is with anti-aging techniques via detoxification.

Everything from colonics to juice fasts to saunas can help patients manage cleansing. Even exercise, when done properly, can promote the cleansing of the body. Supporting important organs of elimination such as the GI tract, lungs, skin, kidneys and liver are essential. One of the most common problems in conventional medicine is that everyone's organs of elimination are assumed to work fine and that's a big mistake. In fact, patients with chronic disease have various levels of stress via cytochrome pathways and organs of elimination.

How does the body eliminate toxins? Very easily, using cytochromes, which are metabolic pathways for transferring things such as lipids, steroidal hormones and even things like drugs and toxic chemicals. Thing of it as the drain that removes all the gunk in your system. You see, many people assume detoxification is unscientific, but it's quite proven and many pharmaceuticals use these exact same cytochromes pathways in deriving optimal doses of medication.

Something a simple as Himalayan Salt can also help. This unrefined salt is pinkish and contains at least 84 minerals, many of which are beneficial for human consumption, including calcium (good for bones); chromium (helpful in metabolizing and regulating blood glucose levels); cobalt (produces more red blood cells); and iron (important for cell formation). Therapeutic dosages may help in the elimination of parasites from the intestinal regions. The science of anti-aging is first accomplished by treating the cause of disease and then helping to balance the body for long-term care.

It becomes clear that using integrative medicine is necessary for patients who want improvement with chronic diseases in way that goes much deeper. Rather than only using medication to calm symptoms, this anti-aging approach also helps to accelerate health and promote the prevention of disease. It's quite clear this is the medicine of the future and it's available now.

If you need help or have any questions regarding our approach to chronic Lyme disease complex, fibromyalgia and autoimmune disease, please contact us today. We would be happy to answer any of your questions.